Conference organisers sell sponsors and delegates months ahead and then deliver a two-day event flawlessly. HR work is planning the team around the event calendar and handling temporary event staff.
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Share your requirementsA conference organising business plans and runs conferences, summits, trade shows and corporate events. A permanent team handles content and speakers, sponsorship and exhibitor sales, delegate marketing, venue and travel logistics, registrations and finance. In event week it adds hostesses, registration desk staff, stage and AV crew, runners and volunteers. Work moves in cycles: months of selling and planning, then a short, intense delivery. Sales staff are judged on revenue before the date, operations staff on a smooth day, and both groups are tired when the event ends. Multiple events overlap, so one slip hurts the next. The best organisers keep their people between events. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in conference organisers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Sales staff chase targets, operations staff deal with the fallout, and credit and blame get argued.
Two events close together leave the same people running both, and quality slips.
Hostesses and registration helpers meet delegates first but get a thin briefing.
Late changes, special requests and complaints land on junior coordinators with little authority.
Setup, event and teardown involve very long hours, with travel and cramped hotel rooms.
Cash arrives around event dates, so bonuses and salaries depend on the success of a few shows.
Interns and trainees are used for heavy tasks without training and leave after one event.
Contacts, lessons learned and vendor ratings are rarely saved, so the next team starts from nothing.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a conference organisers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A calendar showing who is on which event and when, with recovery time between, held in the attendance and leave process.
A calendar showing who is on which event and when, with recovery time between, held in the attendance and leave process.
A handover note for each sold package and a joint review after the event on what was promised and delivered.
A handover note for each sold package and a joint review after the event on what was promised and delivered.
A short course on the programme, key faces, escalation and polite handling of complaints, run before every event.
A short course on the programme, key faces, escalation and polite handling of complaints, run before every event. The employee onboarding can host it.
A written list of what a coordinator may decide, what needs a manager and who answers after hours.
A written list of what a coordinator may decide, what needs a manager and who answers after hours.
Sales incentive tied to collected revenue and delegate quality, with a share for delivery teams.
Sales incentive tied to collected revenue and delegate quality, with a share for delivery teams. See compensation benchmarking.
A one-hour review with a file of lessons, vendor ratings and contacts.
A one-hour review with a file of lessons, vendor ratings and contacts.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Hiring event-day staff with a quick, clear brief.
Incentives that reward sales and delivery fairly.
Rosters and recovery across overlapping events.
Review after each event that improves the next.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
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How a D2C founder can decide which digital marketing work to hire for, which to buy from an agency, and which to split, with a worksheet and a five step plan.
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Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
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A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
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Use a written handover for each package and a joint review after the event. Reward both groups for outcomes the delegate sees.
It depends on size and complexity. Mark the calendar, count heads per event and ensure recovery time between the heavy weeks.
Give a short written brief, a rehearsal, a named lead and clear rules on conduct and breaks.
Give them real but supervised tasks, a mentor, and a clear end point. Avoid using them as free event labour.
Run a short review, save a file of lessons and vendor ratings and make the next event lead read it.
We would look at the event calendar against headcount, the sales to operations handover and event-day briefing. A calendar-based staffing plan and a handover template are a sensible first job. After we talk it through, scope and deliverables are put in writing.
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